A Noble Peace Prize

In what has to be the shock of the decade in international awards, the Nobel Peace Prize went to a man who actually has been helping to create lasting peace. Mohammed Yunus, one of my heroes since I learned the first thing about economics, won the prize this weekend. He is the founder of the Grameen Bank, and legitimately the father of microcredit, a program so successful in every single country where it is tried that one wonders what keeps the multi-trillion-dollar welfare programs from collapsing under the wight of their own uselessness. Well, okay. Nobody wonders. But still.

Microcredit is the idea that you don't even have to teach people how to fish. If you give them a pole, they'll figure out the rest when they're hungry enough. Yunus's book, Banker to the Poor, is half autobiography and half economics treatise on why lending small amounts of money to people transforms the world. He's right. Get the book.

This caps quite a few days for me, as I spent almost all day Friday at a charity event for A Child's Hope, an organization that is rescuing orphaned children in several ridiculously poor countries around the world, most notably in Haiti. As of this meeting, the Chris Jones Group has officially changed charities, and we'll be donating all our money from all our events to this foundation from here on out. Seriously folks, come to Twelfth Night and prepare to be blown away.

In mortgage news, blah, blah, blah. There are other things going on in the world. We'll do something about the market tomorrow.